#*tamlin

some thoughts have indeed been percolating about them ever since i reblogged this poem a few days ago:

tamlin whose mother seeks to protect him by quashing his “softer” more artistic instincts. her sweet son, her gentle son who cannot be so, not with a father like his, not with two brothers who would have torn him clean from her womb if they knew he would eventually show markers of being heir. no poetry. no lyricism. no sketching. pay attention—stop listening to the wind; it does not sing, and even if it did, you do not hear it. and young tamlin sets his jaw. his chest puffs. his fists ball tight. yes, he says. i do. because his brothers just roughed him up for the same thing. his claws poke out. his magic gusts from him. in that moment, she knows for certain what she had only suspected: tamlin is the heir to spring. and he is soft. and he will get eaten.

she loves her son. her sweet son. her gentle son. that’s why she strips him of it. that’s why she encourages him to swallow his emotions—all of them except his anger, which he can show because it makes him hard and tough and lordly. but that is never quite enough, so that’s why she nudges her husband towards sending him to the war bands once he’s of age. to toughen the boy, her husband sneers like he’s the one to have come up with the idea. to see him hearty and hale. it hurts her. it does. she loves her sweet, gentle son; she loves her memories of him with butterflies on every crook, of him fighting sleep beneath the willow to try to write out its song, of him shyly playing his first composition just for her. but she loves him so much that she does not wish to lose him, and so she lets him go.

tamlin loves his mom just as much. he tries not to listen to the wind; he tries not to think in verse and listen in meter. he puts all of himself into his training with his father’s war band. nothing works. nothing sticks. he is a beast but he is not beastly. they deride him and snicker at him and force him to perform all the most grueling tasks. which he does without complaint—but so much anger beneath. until one day he’s around a campfire and the males around him start a game: who can come up with the filthiest limericks? he does not engage. absolutely refuses. it’s his chance to bond, thrown to him by miach (renascence oc mentioned SORRY) after miach heard him unintentionally singing to himself while polishing armor, and he spits on it. because his mother would be appalled. it isn’t until three nights later when—completely out of the blue—he spits the hottest filthiest bars spring has ever known. there’s a lad, miach snorts. he pours tamlin some mead. tamlin knows companionship.

the more tamlin knows companionship, the better tamlin does in the war band. the other males aren’t any easier on him but they are more patient. more supportive. they only blanch for a few hours when he gets so frustrated as to shift into beast. then they begin strategizing on how best to use him. how best to weaponize him. the lad has brawn—the lad has might; he has no need for finesse. (this is where rhysand’s illyrian training later comes in because it’s his magic and shapeshifting that’s capitalized on, not his combat; this is also why rhysand assumes other courts’ legions are not as well-trained.) but the better tamlin does in the war band, the more disjointed from himself he feels.

all the more distant from his mother.

because the beast is a part of him, but it isn’t all he is. this anger mounts in him. it makes him formidable. it makes him fierce and vicious. and when he’s young, he’s so afraid it will become him. that he will forget the song of spring—forget that he ever loved it, forget why he came to hate hearing it. he thinks it’s just the nature of the beast—but really it’s the parts of himself he was forced to suffocate. then, at some point, the anger does become him. it nestles in like a seed in soil. it sprouts. it delves its roots deep. it barbs itself at others. his mother is proud of it, but he isn’t. he learns to be stoic. he learns to swallow his anger like his other emotions, but his anger has thorns. it never settles clean. it always tears back up and up and up. later, he’ll think it has it will become all he is. it will nearly destroy him.

How would Genia react to this though is a bit hard to conceptualize. Would you tell me about your beloved?

every time i’m reminded she Exists for other people i literally turn into this emoji 🥺 i’m not even kidding that’s a real life actual picture taken of me after reading this ask

let me seeee—i think ultimately a very big part of her character once she’s a mother is ensuring her children grow up with the agency and autonomy that was taken from her. (her son doesn’t want to hug you right now. no you may not hug him anyway, nor make him feel bad for not wanting to hug you. no she will not encourage him to hug you to spare your feelings.) i think she’s very much the type of parent who explains things in full to her children and does her best to teach them how to make good choices for themselves, then allows them to use those tools to make their own choices as adolescents -> adults.

i’m imagining this almost like ana and elsa in frozen lfmfksndfj older son is coming into his powers and is wanting to play or show off to younger child. tamlin has warned him not to but not really explained why, maybe too busy—but as a crunchier alternative, maybe his son’s powers involve shifting into a beast or smth that he fosters some deep shame about (beast lord, anger issues, etc.) which activates that wound in him like it hasn’t been in a long long time (s/o genia<333) so he’s pretty terse about just being like: don’t practice without me. but younger sibling is so excited! so interested! he shifts too close and— blood blood there’s so much blood mama papa help

probably i’d say genia is the one to say it to tamlin: he didn’t understand. he didn’t understand. tamlin is blaming himself, but genia is blaming nobody. (not even herself. she doesn’t really have that brand of trauma.) she knows why tamlin was putting off training this magic in their son; she knows their son was only excited and new to his magic; she knows their younger child was only excited, too. i think for her the crashout is more the unfairness of it all. she has worked so hard to be unlike her parents—to keep her children informed—to make sure they know how to make good and smart choices. it isn’t fair; it isn’t fair that her child with the male she loves might be lost anyway; it isn’t fair that their son will have to suffer the burden of it. she has lost so much of herself and rebuilt herself anew from that—must she lose her baby now, too?

thank you for pointing out one of the primary plot points that confirms to me that sjm did not care whatsoever about eris as a character when she started this series lmfao — with that said, i think the reasoning behind this is almost entirely exogenous. sjm just needed a backstory that simultaneously got lucien in spring with tamlin for the events of acotar and easily displayed the cruelty of his family and his court. whether eris would actually let this happen wasn’t considered.

BUT i think there are a few ways to make it work endogenously. for one, i’m sure eris had been tortured himself for so blatantly refusing to help torture and kill jesminda, so i think his physical and mental faculties were impaired. his brother was about to die, and he had to do something — anything. normally he could be smart and strategic and plan ahead, but lucien was already headed in the direction of spring, and there was no one else strong enough in that vicinity to fend off three powerful, bloodthirsty vanserra boys. by necessity, he had to call on tamlin; he had no other recourse available to him.

plus eris and tamlin definitely met at social gatherings as heirs to neighboring courts, so even if tamlin hated eris, eris likely saw the good in tamlin, which was made all the more impressive for how that persisted through tamlin’s shitty family situation. maybe eris knew that tamlin would see himself in lucien (good, kind, warm, enduring lucien) and show compassion — people always tended to show lucien compassion. or maybe it was lucien and tamlin who had a friendly relationship prior to jesminda that eris knew about, so he was sure that tamlin would take lucien in and protect him.

i also think if eris ever caught wind of tamlin harming lucien, he would find other, better arrangements somehow; but he soon (by fae standards — probably a few years or even a decade or so) saw lucien at court as spring emissary, and his brother looked so … happy. so much happier than the last time he had seen him. he knew then that there was no need to step in, that tamlin could provide lucien better protection than he could — at least until amarantha took his eye.

no matter what, eris definitely did not expect tamlin to kill his brothers. maybe he thought tamlin was too good, or otherwise too smart, to do something like that, which would blatantly make an enemy of his father. (it’s the last time he ever makes the mistake of thinking someone else is aware enough to make the same choices he would.) he will never forgive tamlin that, but he blames himself much, much more. for not raising them better, for not playing the game smarter even though he knew how to, for not doing something differently, anything that could have saved all three brothers and not just one.

thoughts on Tamlin showing Beron how persuasive a cock can be? pls pls pls 🥺🙏

love your analyses ♥️

i love lucien and tamlin's dynamic very much, especially as we get it in acotar—fraught and desperate, lucien absolutely frayed by fifty years of potential death and brimming with resentment of tamlin that andras was ultimately killed, tamlin so ashamed and dispirited that he can't bear to acknowledge the way he's let lucien everyone down but it bubbles up out of him in spits of anger he can't swallow down.

pre-acotar, i do think there was always a sense of hierarchy to their relationship—one that tamlin was uncomfortable with but lucien couldn't help but to uphold. (and if we want to make some tamcien fanon conjecture, i think they both clung to that pretense to push down any feelings they had for each other: he is my high lord; he is my emissary; this is nothing but the loyalty between such stations.) lucien not only came from autumn, where the power structure is absolute and immovable, but was also directly subject to beron's hatred, which made it all worse for him. beron undoubtedly looked for any excuse to punish lucien, so lucien had to be outwardly perfect while at court—deferential and smooth, unflappable and charming, always aware of his place. tamlin of course doesn't uphold those structures; he doesn't even have advisors when lucien comes to spring. but i don't think lucien would ever be able to shake that worldview after beron branded it into him, and in fact, i think it was maybe the one aspect of stability lucien could cling to when he lost his love and his family and his home all at once. tamlin was his high lord; he was tamlin's lesser. friends, yes. (more? we can hope.) but when push came to shove, when situations became stressful, lucien was always able to duck back down: he is my high lord, and i serve him.

post-acowar, i think lucien feels a lot of responsibility for and guilt about how tamlin has been faring. lucien was really the only one by tamlin's side when feyre was taken by rhys. he tried his damnedest to keep his high lord, his friend pieced together; he participated in the deal with hybern that he was no doubt reticent to participate in just in the hopes that tamlin would get feyre back and everything would be okay again. then they do get feyre back—and nothing is okay at all. tamlin is still scared and angry and those dark circles seem a permanent fixture under his eyes. there's tension between them because lucien resents how tamlin has been treating him and the position tamlin's choices have put them in. lucien can tell something is up with feyre, but god, he just wants everything to be okay. he wants tamlin back. more than that, though, he wants his mate. to do that, he has to make a choice: tamlin, who saved his life and can take care of himself, or elain, who he feels nestled beneath his ribs always and—as far as he knows, bolstered by feyre's lies—is being kept by those who could be harming her. he already lost one love of his life; he can't lose another. so he leaves with feyre for elain, and that feels absolutely no different than turning his back on tamlin.

and tamlin hates him for it.

I'm so intrigued on how would Iphigenia operate as a powerful, influential public figure when she spent so long as bed slave and mistress and having little to nurture her noble (albeit weak) background.

Also I kinda want to know how would feyre react as Iphigenia being beloved and treated well and loved by both tamlin and his people because as a political science graduate Feysand and Co's way of politicking makes me want to gnaw off my own arm and smack them with it.

omg hey twin one of my majors was poli sci too !! ironically (and not that she’d ever realize it) i think becoming beron’s bed slave wound up giving iphigenia a lot of secret mouseketools to function really well as lady of spring—far more than her upbringing did, since she lived wealthy enough to be taught etiquette but not of status enough to be instructed on politics or economics or any sort of strategy. before beron, she would have been too gullible, too naive, too willing to overlook harm to preserve the sanctity of her comfort and too avoidant of conflict to make difficult decisions for the overall betterment of the court. her experiences surviving him make her a well-suited complement to the way tamlin rules, a lot like lucien was. (for example, i think genia understands the necessity of the tithe and would be fine with enforcement of it. thing is … her abilities literally pertain to enriching the soil through decomp + encouraging forth harvest-ready plants. so everyone is eventually able to contribute.)

where tamlin orients himself always towards action and has little care for social graces at court/really doesn’t bother at all with controlling narratives that surround him, often even letting them inform his opinion of himself rather than the other way around, iphigenia is highly focused on public perception and (because of beron) innately attuned on how to mold it favorably without making it obvious that’s what she’s doing—sometimes even to herself. her life became a performance but then that just became her life again. she internalized all her mechanisms for survival until they became as second nature: assessing how someone might be a threat to her and hers, figuring out what they think about her and hers, knowing what to say to make sure however they feel doesn’t manifest itself as harm to her or hers. it makes her social navigations seem effortless, which is something tamlin needs by his side—especially with his name smeared across prythian. of course flip side for her is that she operates largely on defense, on coversion and suggestion, so having tamlin who is very overt and actionable by her side is crucial to actually getting things done instead of just preventing things from happening.

she has an interesting role to play as lady. i picture tamlin as sort of the grassroots man of the people politician while she’s sort of like his campaign advisor who doesn’t quite know how commonfolk operate like he does but does know how to engender their affection for him. but then as she’s seen with him, as she’s helping alongside him, as she’s exposed to more and more of the court, her perception becomes tied to his. she’s autumn but she’s spring, and being seen as more than what she was made into by beron makes her want to continue moving in service of spring. tamlin’s people become her people too. she moves much more disingenuously and strategically amongst the nobility. they’re more like game pieces to her. she projects maybe a bit too much of the politics of the forest house onto the spring aristocracy but that ultimately isn’t a bad thing because she manages to nip a lot of unrest in the bud before it ever even becomes something tamlin has to act on. they both are fulfilled in taking care of each other and the court without infringing on what the other needs to feel like a caretaker.

now contrast that with feyre—feyre who also lived in survival mode like iphigenia but by necessity became more like tamlin: a woman of action. in order for feyre to feel fulfilled, she needed to be the one to do things, to fix things, to provide for her and hers. but that was a zero sum game. in being the one to take action, she took that sense of purpose away from tamlin. who is he if he’s not in service? that’s what we’re seeing in his current arc in canon: a tamlin completely bereft of his purpose, of the sense of service that, through everything else, he could point to and say, look. at least i’m doing something. at least i can take care of things and not just rage against them. that’s why amarantha cursed him as she did, too—she made him functionally impotent knowing he always does and does and does. others had to act and sacrifice in his stead while he could only be passive.

I’ve been eating your tamgenia analysis posts like potato chips jsyk.

thank ya kindly !!! i love yappin and i love yappin abt them so i’m very very glad you enjoy them :’) my babydarlings

okay so basically iphigenia’s origins were exclusively to be a background character to flesh out the dynamics between eris and a vanserra brother oc of mine, as well as encapsulate just the flippant carnage that surrounds the vanserras. beron takes her as a bed slave -> iphigenia spends the last year of her life in constant survival mode -> emile kills her to subconsciously take something away from beron, then panics -> eris cleans up after emile even though he’s disgusted because that’s what he does for his family. but then she just took on such life on page. there was interest in her and her story. questions about happiness for her instead of the tragic end she met. so the inspo for renascence was to do a fix-it fic for my own oc lore lmfaooo

and who better to save her than tamlin!

tamlin who has lost all faith in himself and his capacity to be good and his ability to protect people/things he cares about—but whose goodness is a core, unalterable facet of his personhood, no matter the mistakes he has made. putting them together felt Right. iphigenia who threw herself into the most raging flame just to use the heat of it as protection; tamlin who has struggled with crossing boundaries and overstepping and even harming the ones he loves in his efforts to protect them. a scorched survivor; a shattered shield. iphigenia needs someone fierce with all others but gentle with her; tamlin needs someone who will not shy from the ferocity that comes with his gentleness—who has known anger that begets violence and so sees that his is something far kinder.

they challenge each other too, which i think is really important. tamlin gets rocked every time his temper rises around iphigenia at first. she shuts down the moment he gets angry—and that confirms one of his deepest fears after feyre and lucien: his anger is inherently harmful; he is someone who can only hurt and destroy and strike fear. iphigenia is so traumatized from beron that she sees tamlin only as a threat. he’s big, he’s powerful, he’s mercurial; he keeps acting in unexpected ways. at least if he acted like beron, she’d know how to handle him. he doesn’t, and that scares her all the worse. but also. she doesn’t want him to act like beron either. just like !!! a very bad no good situation all around.

but as they keep interacting, their traumas begin to … complement? each other’s??? tamlin gets angry, which she knows means he’ll hurt her—but he doesn’t. over and over again, he doesn’t. he leaves. he makes himself small. even if his words are gruff and blunt, his actions are never violent towards her. she begins to feel safe with him. she stops cowering from his anger. she starts navigating it without fear. that’s like. unimaginable to him after feyre and lucien—and the ic dogpiling on him. she should be afraid of him. he hurts people. he is violent. he is not unlike his brothers and his father at all in the end, except that he has no capacity to rule. but she isn’t anymore! she keeps not being afraid of him! in fact, she keeps treating him like he isn’t someone to be afraid of at all.

(so uhhhhh allat to say the themes i hope to explore are character-driven and interpersonal! i feel like i have a pretty solid world built out in my head for acotar, so it’s really fun to have it as an established backdrop for tamgenia. i hope spring and autumn and prythian as a whole feel lived-in and tangible as they continue to navigate through the world.)

oooo i think it's like roundabout established in renascence but the timeline is post-acosf wherein all of the events from acowar on were stretched out over a few decades instead of a few months(? years?), mostly so as to give time for iphigenia to 1) be born and grow into adulthood; and 2) hear muddled fifth-hand accounts and rumors about what happened under and after amarantha—which means tamtam has been down bad for significantly longer than in canon.

one of my favorite headcanons to come from this is that because he spent so much of that time in his beast form, his movements and tendencies are more animalistic than they used to be. he'll look askance when he doesn't want to be seen as a threat—subconsciously make himself smaller. (genia notices this when his anger peaks—to her he seems to suddenly deflate or shrink, shoulders drawing in, head ducking. there are also a lot of times she doesn't notice it, primarily when he isn't angry but she's still wary of him—he steps back from her a lot, shifts his weight away, physically crouches down, etc.) his voice is deeper and gruffer from both disuse and from being accustomed to making Animal Sounds. i also love tamlin who eats his meat raw, who has no qualms about tearing past a hide with his teeth, even in fae form.

a hallmark for established tamgenia is that they feel safe expressing their anger around and with each other. that's a really important part of their arc. tamlin whose anger often harms those around him either intentionally or unintentionally and so who carries A Lot of shame about feeling it at all, even when it's justified; iphigenia who shies away from acting on her anger because beron taught her that it ultimately amounted to nothing—nothing she did in service of herself could actually help her, better always to fawn than to fight or flee and risk a punishment. it's tamlin who feels comfortable to do so first; iphigenia eventually realizes that his anger never harms her (which is like 🫨🫨🫨 for her) and thus stops flinching from it, helping tamlin realize that anger is not inherently bad and he is not inherently bad for feeling it so long as he's mindful with it. this takes longer for iphigenia though. for a long time, there's that small fear in her mind that the other shoe might drop if she pushes him too hard—and she wouldn't be able to stomach it, if she found the capacity in him to treat her like beron did. but there is no capacity in tamlin for that. eventually she realizes this too.

tamlin also gets more playful with iphigenia and more banterous as their relationship progresses, just like we see in acotar with feyre. his words come easier because he isn't uncertain in his standing with her or subconsciously trying to push her away to spare her of him. more smiles. more earnest charm. the kind that disarms iphigenia at once because there's no artifice in it, no intent behind it. it isn't the double-spoken veneer of autumn; there isn't anything to parse out from it. tamlin is what he is and says what he means. so this exchange: "i used to write." "stories?" "poetry, mostly. lyrics if i was inspired." "and what moves the high lord of the spring court to song?" tamlin, looking directly at iphigenia: "beauty." well that literally makes her brain start going brrrrrrbrrrbrrrrrbrrrrrrrrrr. she also has that delightfully sharp, coquettish autumn rizz that tamlin enjoys of lucien hidden beneath the obsequence beron expected of her, so once tamlin opens those flirtatious doors, she's literally In Her Element.